Sufjan Stevens Quotes
I quickly learned that you don't have to be incarcerated by suffering, and that, in spite of the dysfunctional nature of your family, you are an individual in full possession of your life.

Quotes to Explore
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The thing about markets, and I think the thing people don't understand about that, is markets are not kind, but they're very efficient. So when the marketplace determines an inefficiency in the system, it corrects that, and a market system that's left alone will reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.
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I've wanted to be an actor for such a long time that I haven't had anything else in my thoughts. I think my family would have quite liked me to be a lawyer.
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I think the kind of unexpected I really love is when you open books and the actual way of writing is different and interesting. Like reading Virginia Woolf for the first time or Lawrence Durrell for the first time.
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I have this kind of mild nice-guy exterior, but inside my heart is like a steel trap.
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A busybody's work is never done.
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In those days, even as a boy, I watched some people that I knew were living way beyond their means.
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With all the great products that are apparently out there that are undetectable, for me to take something like that... when people take things that now aren't even being tested for, does it make any sense?
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A good leader must be fair.
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When you sample something, you're using the crutch of borrowing chords and melodies from a song that's already great, that's already stood the test of time, that's already special. When you're trying to do it all from scratch, you're writing something brand new that has to stand on its own.
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When you do something with a lot of honesty, appetite and commitment, the input reflects in the output.
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What I love about a play is that it's such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.
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I don't want to give any advice to a 19-year-old, because I want a 19-year-old to make mistakes and learn from them. Make mistakes, make mistakes, make mistakes. Just make sure they're your mistakes.
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I missed a lot of school for auditions, but other than that I had a very normal childhood.
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I am very, very clear on how difficult it is for a young kid out there to go into the arts without taking a lot of heat from his peers.
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I'm often stunned when I come up over Mulholland, and I'm looking down at the Valley, and I can see for thirty miles; I can see the mountains, or all the way to the ocean.
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My mother never really thought I could become anything.
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Today, political events are nullified unless they're on TV.
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Love never reasons, but profusely gives; it gives like a thoughtless prodigal its all, and then trembles least it has done to little.
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Without Deborah Harry, there's no Madonna; there's no Lady Gaga and beyond. There was something that she did that was very new and powerful in pop, and she was responsible for a change in the way the world acted.
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I never intended to be a professional writer; as the story developed, the one thing I had in my hopes was that this would be something tangible to separate me from the nameless, numbered masses.
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In my camp, we have Minotoro Noguiera and Lyoto Machida.
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I consider myself a gladiator.
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Surf is something I have been obsessed with since I was a child.
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I quickly learned that you don't have to be incarcerated by suffering, and that, in spite of the dysfunctional nature of your family, you are an individual in full possession of your life.